This is probably beyond the marketing budget of most companies, but completely taking over a popular website for a short amount of time can provide an incredible level of brand exposure. It may not convert to sales right away, but increasing the presence of your brand in the marketplace can only help you in the long run.

Check out this screenshot from College Humor. College Humor is a great website that is usually filled with a lot of funny videos like the Street Fighter: The Later Years series. The site gets a lot of visitors, so having a good advertising campaign featured there will offer a lot of exposure. In the screenshot provided, you can see that AirTran U has completely taken over the site.

It’s not just a simple banner at the top of the page (that’s there too). The color scheme of the site is inline with AirTran U branding, there is a wraparound ad around the main content, and the background image is that of AirTran U. Before the main video airs, you are told that the content is brought to you by AirTran U and then at the end of the video, you get a 15 second commercial. Some may say that this is overkill, but this makes sure that every visitor is exposed to the AirTran U brand.

This marketing strategy is very, very expensive. It would be interesting to see the conversion rate and the eCPM of an ad campaign like this.

Thanks to David Pitlyuk for the heads up.